Reading the labels on food at the supermarket is not what most shoppers would consider exciting. In fact, it can slow down your food shopping to a crawl as you try and decipher every can and package of food, before putting into the shopping cart.
Why read the nutritional values, printed on the back of packaged food? After all, food, is food, right? Or, maybe you have discovered there is something in that proverb, “You are, what you eat”.
More often these days, consumers are paying more attention than ever, to what they are buying at the supermarket. In the long run, it can matter what you eat regularly. Staying healthy and nutrition go hand, in hand. Not only will you be healthier for eating better, you feel better too.
Reading the food labels of the food you buy, may seem daunting at first. It looks like another language, or a math equation. Yet, there is a wealth of information in these labels that you should know about. The only reason those nutritional labels are required on all food packages, is to help you make better buying decisions, purchasing your food.
Once you understand what all that small print is about, you will be flying down those supermarket aisles in, no time at all.
Understanding the “Nutrition Facts” label that is on the food you buy, does not have to be rocket science. You can get all the information you need at CFSAN/Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements.
To give you some idea, of what the nutritional labels are about, let’s do a quick run through.
The very first thing a nutritional label addresses is, “serving size. Serving size refers to, how many servings are in the food package, or container that are included. It is important to remember, all of the nutritional values listed, will pertain to an individual serving.
Let’s rip apart a bag of potato chips, for fun, and see how many calories are in it. This bag of potato chips weighs in at 11.6 ounces. On the back of this tasty bag of chips, is a “Nutritional Facts” labels. The first thing it tells you is, how many servings per bag. There are about 11 servings, at about 1 oz. per serving size.
The next thing listed on this bag of potato chips will be, “calories”, at 150 per serving. If you eat the whole bag, that would be about 1,650 calories you just ate.
An adult’s calorie needs per day, start at around a 2,000 calorie diet; depending on the person. It would not be a wise choice to eat this bag of chips in one sitting. Potato chips may taste good, but a whole bag of chips has way more fat and sodium than you need in your body at one time.
Potato chips are not very nutritional. There are a lot of “empty” calories in chips. 80 calories, per 150 total calorie serving of the potato chips are listed as fat.
The nutritional label breaks down even further from here, showing only traces of anything nutritional in this bag of potato chips.
Gaining weight and high fat foods have everything in common. Saturated fat also raises cholesterol levels more than other fats. 100% of the amount of fat in those potato chips was saturated fat. It would be a good guess, a person trying to watch their weight and lower their cholesterol level, would want to keep potato chips out of their diet.
Healthy, nutritional foods are low in fat, low in cholesterol and low in sodium. There are nutritional guide lines established by the FDA, for understanding what a healthy diet is.
Every five years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services updates their, “Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It is an easy to read guide, you can download for free, from their website.
Another good resource for nutritional and dietary information, is at the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Information Center. You can browse by nutritional subject, or use their search engine for more detailed specific information.
When you learn what your nutritional needs are, then you are able to apply this scale to the nutritional labels on the food at the market, so you are buying more of what you need, to live healthier.
